There is a growing interest in providing and developing cloud environments, and many service providers offer cloud services to their customers. Such cloud services comprise for instance software as a service (SaaS) type of services such as e-mail, virtual desktops, gaming etc. The number of cloud service providers increases as do the sizes of their data centers, and also the number of servers in their respective systems.
Privacy breaches against users of the services provided within the cloud environments made by hackers or even by governmental intelligence agencies are occurring, comprising for instance retrieving private data from Internet services providers. International Internet organizations have started taking steps forward to avoid such occurrences in the future and to enforce user control is an important target of those organizations. Users of the various cloud services are thus becoming more and more aware of risks related to their use, such as for instance compromised privacy, integrity and security of their data. These concerns are met in various ways, e.g. by the service providers granting privacy and confidentiality by for instance providing encrypted connections.
It would be desirable to give users of cloud environments an increased control of resource usage within the cloud environment, whereby e.g. their privacy, integrity and security could be increased. This is however a delicate task, particularly in case of global cloud networks involving resources of several different operators. The sheer size alone of such system, comprising hundreds or thousands of servers, renders the provision of user control a difficult task.